The following article has been adapted from a double-sided A4 leaflet which was handed out at a protest for Palestine, which commenced from Queen's Park in the Brisbane CBD at 2pm on Sunday 26 November. The 344K PDF file is attached here (earlier version here).

Palestine-born and trained doctor who, at 12 yrs old, was shot in the neck by a sniper on his way home from school, speaks of then and now at a pro-Palestinian rally in Brisbane on 19 November 2023. The rally was very large and a later march took up several blocks, where numerous groups of supporters lined the footpaths. People are aghast, shocked, disturbed, at the failure by world leaders to heed the suffering and extinction of so many people in Gaza, in full view, 24/7.

With the exception of some members of the cross-bench, mostly Greens, both Australia's houses of Parliament support Israel's war against more than 2 million Palestinians (who are also mostly Israeli citizens) crowded into the Gaza strip.

"The West Bank already started to be destroyed
Jenin streets and homes and another hospital besieged
Our fate will be like Gaza, the terrorist army warned
Beirut too soon and other cities will also be damned
for our "new Middle East" with Starbucks
Grow General Electric and all war stocks
The USA has got Israel's back and gives the weapons to kill
American Taxpayers foot the bill
Will anyone signal stop?"  [More of this poem and links inside.]

This video opens with former President Poreshenko (7 June 2014 – 20 May 2019) on Ukraine parliamentary TV talking up genocide in Donbass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc9gUCy3Yds.

As Australian academic Tim Anderson has pointed out (see below), the Aramaic language, which was spoken by Jesus Christ and now spoken only in Syria, has been under threat by the war against the Syrian people that started over a decade ago on 15 March 2011. This war has been waged mainly by tens of thousands of paid terrorist proxies of the United States and its allies - Israel, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, France and Turkey. This terrible war has, so far, cost over 400,000 Syrian lives, including 80,000 Syrian soldiers by one estimate and caused the internal displacement of more than half of Syria's population and has caused many others to seek refuge overseas. (Wikipedia's somewhat less terrible figures can be found here.)

In spite of the victories by the Syrian Arab Army, Lebanese Hezbollah volunteers, Iranian military advisers and Russian Army and Air Force contingents, the enemies of Syria seem to be resolved to keep their terrorist war going, to maintain crippling economic sanctions and, in the case of the United States, maintain its illegal occupation of Syria's oil fields in Eastern Syria and the theft of Syria's oil. They apparently intend to continue this war for however long it takes to break the resistance of the Syrian people - another 10 years, another 50 years or however long it takes. The longer this continues, the harder it will be for the Aramaic people to preserve their language and culture.

For this war to ever end, people in the West will have to organise protests in solidarity with the Syrian people and against their own governments' criminal conduct towards Syria.

Julian Assange and Wikileaks can help stop the war against Syria

There is not, currently, a great deal about Syria on Wikileaks. Its page on Syria is dated Thursday 5 July 2012, only one year and four months after that war had commenced. It is somewhat critical of the Syrian government as well as of the terrorist opposition, as even many defenders of Syria were back then:

"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said: 'The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria's opponents. It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it.'"

So far, not a lot has yet been leaked to Wikileaks about the Western nation's criminal conspiracy against Syria. Still, the Wikileaks news service remains our best hope of finding out the vital facts behind the Syrian war in addition to all the other wars about which Wikileaks has revealed so much.

It is vital that we continue our campaign against the British government's illegal imprisonment and torture of him and against the United States' attempt to kidnap extradite Julian Assange.

Following our successful protest outside the Melbourne British Consulate, Melbourne supporters of Julian Assange will be resuming our weekly Friday evening vigil from 6:30pm outside Flinders Street Station. We will be holding our vigil on this coming Good Friday public holiday of 2 April.

At that vigil, we will also be demanding as shown on our large banner that the Australian government act to end the British government's illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange.

Please be there to help us hold our banner, distribute leaflets and listen to speeches.

Our city was alight last night as was the countryside
the first, an exhibition the latter ecocide.

Infernos rage devouring branches, trees and leaves,
baking soil, cooking worms, singeing feathered wings ,
fragile membranes of flying foxes, gliders,
or burning them to oblivion. These creatures cannot outrun
the raging flames gathering force, uniting over ridges.
Wind assisted, the fires grow and gather speed.
These fires can turn a house, a car, a firetruck
into a skeleton or a mere suggestion of what was there before,
an imprint on the ground around what was yesterday a fireplace and chimney.

Smoke envelops once carefree seaside towns. The skies are dark at midday
and penetrating that thick blackness,
the sun appears faintly like a distant headlight through a London fog.

Cancelled camping trips leave city children disappointed.
Now trapped and urbanised, they take refuge in their phones
while those living on the coast are bailed up on beaches, homeless and afraid.
Others lost their lives, eaten up by flames.
The greatest toll was wildlife 500 million dead I'm told.
The rescued ones bear scars on ears and legs and toes
and there's nowhere to return to if by chance they are restored.

Australia's cities were alight last night in magnificent displays,
As the remnants of our forests were consumed in such a blaze!

Video inside: Tom Duggan lives in Damascus, Syria. This week he covered the Jaishal Islam (Saudi supported) terrorist group leaving Douma, Syria. He reports, "We were expecting between 3000 and 8000 hostages to be released. We got less than 100. Where did they all go? They had been held for between four and six years. Jaishal Islam submitted the names of these people, their ID numbers, and the Syrian Government, in good faith, accepted the release of the terrorists in exchange for the hostages they claimed to have. This is a huge example of genocide, but the UN has not even acknowledged it." Up to 8000 Syrians slaughtered or starved by Jaishal Islam, which the Syrian Government has been fighting, and, meanwhile the United states posing as an 'exceptional' state, is threatening to attack Syria, which will draw Russia and probably China into war, on the basis of a completely unproven allegation that the Syrian Government used 'chemical weapons' against its own people. Duggan knows there is a high risk of Damascus being attacked by the rogue 'exceptional' US state, but he has decided to remain there.

The flooding of Europe by countless waves of refugees may be the result of the “strategic depopulation” of Syria carried out by opponents of the country’s government, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested.

Transparency organization WikiLeaks has looked through its diplomatic cables and unearthed “an interesting speculation about the refugee movement,” Assange said in an interview with Geek news site, ThePressProject.“So, the speculation was this: Occasionally opponents of a country would engage in strategic depopulation, which is to decrease the fighting capacity of a government,” he explained.

Article originally published at https://www.rt.com/news/319797-syria-depopulation-refugees-assange/ on 27 Oct, 2015 02:13.

LISTEN MORE:

The whistleblower pointed out that “it’s predominantly the middle class that is fleeing” Syria on account of having “language skills, money, some connections.” Engineers, managers and civil servants are “precisely, the classes that ...[are] needed to keep the government functioning,” he said.

Syrian people are encouraged to flee their country “by Germany saying they’ll accept many-many refugees, and by Turkey taking nearly three million refugees, thus significantly weakening the Syrian government,” Assange stressed.

Syria isn’t the only case of migration being used as a weapon in recent history; during the Iraq War, Sweden told the US that “the acceptance of Iraqi refugees was part of its contribution,” according to cables.

The WikiLeaks founder said that it’s a “disgrace” that the US refuses to take in Syrian refuges because it’s Washington who should be held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe and making EU states close its borders with one other.

“The situation comes about as a result of the US, UK and French policy in the Middle East together with the behavior of US regional allies in the Middle East – Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Israel… and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The intercepted documents, already published by WikiLeaks, revealed that the US had been plotting to overthrow the Syrian government since around 2006, Assange stressed.

“It was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia; trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias … trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria also to make trouble, using the Saudis and Egypt to help push that along,” he said.

Meanwhile any of Assad’s attempts to battle terrorism and the expansion of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) strength were presented as a demonstration of weakness and “an example of [the] Syrian government not having full control over its territory to encourage the government overthrow,” the whistleblower added.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights and Irin both purport to be disinterested information sources on conflict in Syria and boast that the UN relies on them as its primary source. But they are not disinterested. There is abundant evidence that they promote the 'rebel' or terrorist side of the conflict and that their funding is from organisations and countries aligned with US-NATO support for aggression in the region. They are in fact promoting war propaganda against Syria and it is amazing that people one would expect to be more discerning, take this on face value. In this article I try to find out why Tim Costello, of World Vision, came to accuse the Syrian government of killing more people than ISIS without taking into account that these deeds were actions by a national army defending its people from multiple assaults by violent gangs, including ISIS, many of them supported by US-NATO funding and arms.

"Question for Tim Costello: Why does World Vision ignore analysis on the war in Syria (it seems to me) and instead repeat the claims of 'rebel' supporters and western politicians with no scrutiny, and in so doing World Vision ignores experts, for example MIT's Prof Ted Postol and former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045-possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.html and more importantly it ignores millions of Syrians who take refuge in government controlled cities and towns, such as Damascus, Hama and Latakia? Australians should be aware of the terror and fear faced by those Syrians who don't support 'rebels', men with guns who depend on foreign money, clerics who incite the killings of civilians (leading to killing fields), foreign jihadis and the foreign policy of US neocons?" (Susan Dirgham on QandA facebook in response to Tim Costello's remarks on QandA of 14 September 2015.)

QandA, the very popular Australian TV program on public television, on 14 September 2015, dealt with the question of bombing ISIS in Syria without the Syrian government’s permission, supposedly at the invitation of Syria’s neighbour Iraq asking for help. (Program link here.)

World Vision's ambiguous message

Tim Costello, the CEO of the 'community development organisation World Vision', spoke generally against interventions and bombing in general, saying correctly that war survives on arms manufacture and that the US and Russia account for 60% of arms exports, and that the arms are funnelled by the US and Europe via Saudi Arabia and by Russia ‘with’ Iran. He stated that the war has now killed 250,000 people and that there are 16 m Syrians in need of humanitarian relief. Failing to note that Syrian Government is helping many millions itself, he said, “We are working there and in the camps.” He suggested that the war could only end if ‘Putin and Obama’ came to the decision not to send any more arms. He then repeated, apparently gratuitously, a new piece of war propaganda against the Syrian Government, with, “You’re right, Assad has killed, this year, seven times more people than ISIS has.”

Origin of war slogan circulated by mass media and 'trusted' 'authorities'

Now where did that ‘information’ come from and what did it mean? Although the same phrase was quoted as far and wide as the Washington Post[1] and the International Business Times, it seems to have come from two NGOs which profess to be neutral but which clearly support ‘rebel’ terrorism against the Syrian Government.

These organisations are the Syrian Network for Human Rights and Irin - a corporate subsidised branch of a UN publication.[2] They are 'responsible' for almost all 'fact and opinion' cited by the western mainstream and the UN on Syria.[3]

World Vision, by taking sides. could cause more deaths than it prevents

Tim Costello's remarks, arguing against war on the one hand, but demonising an elected government on the other hand, cancel each other out and pose no effective logical obstacle to Australia’s illegal entry into Syrian airspace. They show that the CEO of World Vision has taken sides in a war against a legally elected government which provides with the Syrian national army the only safe haven for 70 to 80 percent of the population against terrorists which ‘our side’ calls ‘rebels’, ‘moderates’ and Da’esh. World Vision should maintain impartiality in all wars because it expects to have access to people in need in territories at war and cannot be trusted if it takes sides. World Vision also solicits donations all over the world on the principle that it is a trustworthy force doing good in conflict zones and refugee camps. It was therefore alarming that Costello spoke against the elected Assad Government, whilst ostensibly talking down war.

Shadie Taled's logical and important challenge to war propaganda

On the same episode of QandA there was a video question from Shadie Taled, who said, under the heading, “Assad is fighting ISIS”, that, “Statistics suggest that most Syrians, my father included, support Dr Bashar Al Assad, even though he has been labelled by the West as a dictator, despite the lack of information and evidence to suggest so. If we genuinely cared about Syrian citizens and were serious about combating ISIS, why haven't we considered supporting Dr Assad who has been fighting ISIS for years? https://www.facebook.com/abcqanda/posts/10152989388771831

Programmed message over-rides thinking; Taled's fair question ignored

After this impressive videoed question/statement, the members of the ‘expert’ panel, to a man or woman, including famed 'peace' activist, Joan Baez, completely ignored this Mr Taled's burning question. It was a remarkable televised demonstration of ‘selective perception’; how people simply choose not to see or hear things that contradict a particular bias. However the same panel agreed with lengthy remarks from two members of the audience, who called for the bombing and removal of the Syrian Government.[4]

Syrian point of view suppressed

There were several Syrians in the audience who, like Mr Taled, held the opposite view and wanted to express this. We must remember that they had come to that studio in an effort to stop further destruction of their country. Although they had been invited to the studio, they were not given the chance. They were extremely disappointed, with one describing their treatment as ‘appalling’.

Experts or war-mules?

Although I am used to seeing and hearing constant propaganda about Syria on Australian and US media, I was dumbfounded by the crassness of the propaganda that came out of Tim Costello and other panelists’ mouths because I realised that it would be used to help justify the Australian airforce invasion of Syria on the flimsiest of pretexts and would decrease the ability of the Syrian Army to defend the Syrian people. To me there is no excuse for educated people to market propaganda in a war because they have every opportunity to find out the other side. Were none of these irresponsibly arrogant 'experts' capable of looking at RT or Iranian Press TV or the numerous citizen reports on you-tube or studying the many detailed interviews given by President Bashar al-Assad? Were they completely ignorant of the June 2014 elections where he was resoundingly re-elected in elections that were monitored by international observers who reported to the UN? Could they possibly be unaware of the role of our criminal ally, the grotesquely brutal Saudi Arabia dictatorship, in financing the attempted destruction of Syria and the obliteration of Yemen?

Each member of the panel came out damning the Syrian government and thereby providing positive propaganda for the Australian Government’s invasion of Syria purportedly in defense of Iraq, but with a stated desire to see the ‘Assad regime’ removed. The consequences of such a role could not just mean many millions more refugees and economic migrants from a devastated territory, but a new world war over this region so bitterly contested by world powers. In the short term it could mean the survival or obscene destruction of one of the oldest civilisations in the world and its people. It therefore seems to me that to repeat allegations that justify illegal invasion or comfort aggression by the questionable painting of a leader of an elected government as evil is a war crime.

NOTES

[1] The Washington Post used the remark in a big article about a battle in Douma,[1] which quotes its source as, "Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain."

[2] Note that anyone including many business organisations or governments may become partners and supporters of the United Nations and advertise themselves as such. All kinds of businesses do, including disaster capitalists, awful government departments and propaganda units. The UN has “corporate, government, community and media partners as well as our supporters whose generous support ensures the ongoing success of our many programs and activities.” That is not to say that there are not good things about the UN; just that you need to be sure which bit of the UN you are dealing with who their donors are.

[3] Commentary on Syria has only a very few sources, all of them highly suspect, as these articles show: and http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-syrian-observatory-for-human-rights-is-a-propaganda-front-funded-by-the-eu-its-objective-is-to-justify-pro-democracy-terrorism/5331072

Irin http://newirin.irinnews.org/our-team/, has 'partners' in major development organisations in Switzerland, Sweden, and indirectly via the Jynwel Foundation , which is a branch of ‘Jynwel Capital, an international investment and advisory firm’ that promotes an association with the United Nations. Irin's website carries frankly anti-Assad propaganda, such as this article, http://www.irinnews.org/report/101861/the-road-to-damascus-key-syrian-artery-under-threat

The Syrian network for Human Rights and Irin involved in promoting the Syrian Government as worse than ISIS describe themselves as impartial on their websites, but their statements elsewhere show them to be pro-‘rebel’; Prepared to accept US military strikes at any cost, including the destruction of Syria.

“But Fadel Abdul Ghani of the Syrian Network for Human Rights told me that he and his group feel that a likely post-attack surge in Syrian refugees and possible deaths resulting from U.S. strikes are still preferable to doing nothing.

"If Assad continues without any intervention, everyday we will keep loosing [sic]100 to120 people," Abdul Ghani said. "We have no choice. If we don't try to take out Assad's missiles and tanks, he will continue using them against civilians."” (Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-human-rights-groups-dont-agree-on-what-to-do-about-syria/279360/)

[4] BOURAN ALMIZIAB: "They are - they are brutal. They are - they are the worst kind of people. We acknowledge that. But before ISIS, tens of thousands of Syrians were killed. Why wasn't there any kind of intervention before? Why is it only ISIS that's the lights are spot on ISIS? We were killed before that. We were killed in tens of thousands, massacres, chemicals, bombs. Everything you call - everything that's in the book, we were there. Tens of thousands of Syrians were killed in jails. They were starved. They were tortured and then they died slowly. Why is it only ISIS being targeted? Why isn't it the Assad regime targeted as well? [...]"

This is a letter to Malcolm Turnbull, Communications Minister, from Susan Dirgham of AMRIS. It draws his attention to the danger presented to Australia by biased reporting on Syria. Ms Dirgham points out that such biased reporting may have caused young Australians to join ISIS and other 'revolutionaries' in the mistaken impression that they were fighting for freedom. She also gives a link to where an Al-Jazeera reporter called for the genocide of Alawis in Syria and suggests that the tens of thousands of Alawis in Australia may not be immune from similar intimidation either. She asks Mr Turnbull to exercise some leadership in this matter. Candobetter.net Editor: We have updated this article (which initially contained the words of an email document sent yesterday) to reflect some changes in the wording of the hard copy which was sent today.

The Hon. Malcolm Turnbull
MP, Minister for Communications
PO Box 6022, House of Representatives
Parliament House,
Canberra, ACT 2600

21 May 2015

Dear Minister,

As you are Australia's Communications Minister, I urge you to give attention to a program broadcast this month on Al-Jazeera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtNYSUqYHw&feature=youtu.be

The program targets an Arabic speaking audience, and it would have a significant number of viewers in Australia. The host of the Al-Jazeera program and one guest express support for the killing of Alawis in Syria. They do not exclude women and children.

Note, there is at least one petition being distributed protesting this incitement to genocide by the host of an Al-Jazeera program:

http://www.change.org/p/amnesty-international-human-rights-watch-office-of-the-special-advisor-on-the-prevention-of-genocide-office-of-the-high-commissioner-for-human-rights-bring-al-jazeera-network-and-faisal-al-kasim-to-justice-for-inciting-genocide-on-tv

This call for genocide on Al-Jazeera may appear to be an aberration and as such dismissed by many. However, I contend that there is a tolerance for such vitriolic hatred within our own community and the groundwork for it has been partially laid by mainstream reporting of the Syrian conflict. (It is worth noting that prominent Al-Jazeera journalists have resigned in protest over that media outlet’s coverage of the conflict in Syria and Bahrain.)

In the last four years, I have contacted the ABC on numerous occasions to alert journalists to the distortion and bias in reports on Syria and to warn them that such reporting will encourage some in the community to support a violent jihad in Syria, something which can have repercussions in Australia. My last formal complaint was in regards to the bias in a report on AM. Despite the weight of my arguments and the implications of a mainstream broadcaster presenting militias intent on destroying the army of a secular society in a positive light, it was not upheld. http://susandirgham.wordpress.com

Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, much of the reporting and official commentary on Syria has been framed in terms of 'a brutal Alawi regime oppressing the Sunni majority'. As the guest who stood up against the calls for genocide on the Al-Jazeera program explained, this does not reflect the reality of the Syrian government, the army or the conflict.

I was heartened this week to see an article in the alternative magazine "New Matilda" which analyses and challenges mainstream reports on Syria. https://newmatilda.com/2015/05/17/corporate-media-and-syria-study-propaganda-and-sloppy-standards

There must be some serious examination of the media presentation of the conflict in Syria and how that impacts Australians who support ISIS or al-Nusra in Syria. It would seem appropriate that you initiate it.

Like Syria, Australia is a diverse and secular society. It too can suffer from hatreds and divisions stirred up by malevolent forces.

For example, there are tens of thousands of people with Alawi Muslim backgrounds in Australia who have come from Syria, Lebanon or Turkey. Unbeknownst to most of us, they may already be facing intimidation from sections of the community who are influenced by calls to hate, both direct and indirect, from a range of sources.

Other key commentators have presented the conflict in the Middle East in sectarian terms. For example, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States has described the terrorist group ISIS as the 'lesser evil'; in his mind 'Shia' are the greater evil. No doubt such views expressed by a prominent person have an impact on communities and reporting. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/israels-former-ambassador-to-the-us-on-the-palestinian-question/373627/

On the other hand, retired U.S. General Wesley Clark has claimed that friends and allies of America created ISIS in order to destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHLqaSZPe98

What is the truth? At times it seems the world is edging towards an abyss and we are being taken there with our minds, our eyes and our mouths closed.

An esteemed professor at M.I.T., Professor Theodore Postol, and a former U.N. weapons inspector, Mr Richard Lloyd, published a paper that contended that the Syrian army could not have fired the weapons that purportedly carried sarin and killed over 300 people in Damascus in August 2013. Unsubstantiated claims that the Syrian government was responsible for this 'massacre' and others have contributed to many people's bafflement regarding the war and to their disengagement in regards to supporting peace or the war's victims. On the other hand, the claims have led to the active engagement of others on the side of the terror. The implications of Postol and Lloyd's findings are extremely significant, yet our public or corporate media eschews them. Here is a link to the Theodore Postol and Richard Lloyd report: http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1006045-possible-implications-of-bad-intelligence.html

To unite Australians and to fear the future less, it is vital that we espouse and live values that reflect our common humanity and which can inspire us all. Organizations cannot display courage; individuals must.

In the past four years, many brave people in Syria have been committed to the work of reconciliation. If Syria is not to become a failed state and its people destitute and brutalized for decades to come, these efforts must be acknowledged and supported. "The Babbila Reconciliation: a Light at the End of Syria’s Dark Tunnel" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSS-AhrqGps

As Communications Minister and as someone committed to reconciliation, you are in an excellent position to take a lead. I urge you to give attention to the call for genocide on the Al-Jazeera program and to respond appropriately. Also, with the increasing number of reports of Australians being lured to Syria to support designated terrorist organizations, there is an urgent need for an independent parliamentary enquiry into the coverage of the conflict in Syria by our Public Service Broadcasters.

Yours faithfully,

Susan Dirgham

National Coordinator of "Australians for Reconciliation in Syria" (AMRIS)

CC: Australian Communications and Media Authority

Boatloads and planeloads of refugees are fleeing the globalist tradewars that are destroying their countries and the European Union wants Europe to accept refugee quotas. Everyone is worried about how Western countries are going to deal with refugees. But why doesn't anyone mention that all these wars the West is involved in are producing these exoduses?

"Migrant quotas are out of the question" in Europe, François Hollande has stated. After the French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, it was François Holland's turn to voice his opposition to the European Commission's proposition of imposing migrant quotas on the member states of the European Union.

"Migrant quotas are out of the question because we have our rules" on "border control and policies for immigration control," said the French Head of State on Tuesday 19th of May at a press conference in company with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.[1]

Why the influx?

Why the increasing influx of refugees, which are lately just being called 'migrants'? Although many come by plane or road, the most spectacular arrivals are by boat. Bigger and bigger boatloads of displaced people are currently floating in various seas and candobetter.net gets press releases daily on the subject from organisations like the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

These migrants or refugees are all fleeing wars that have destroyed their homes and their jobs or are about to. Most of those wars are globalist trade wars led by the US and NATO, purporting to be humanitarian interventions, in the Middle East and Africa. You only have to see where US/NATO are sending money or soldiers to be able to pick the origin of the most recent refugees.

For instance, on 19 May 2015 (yesterday) the IOM informed us that "IOM Iraq's Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) has recorded 40,608 individuals (6,768 families) displaced by violence in Ramadi since 15 May. Of these, over 39,500 individuals (some 6,600 families) are displaced within Anbar governorate." This is the result of battles with ISIS, which is itself a product of the breakdown of Middle Eastern order through Western invasions based on non-existent "weapons of mass destruction."

But Iraq is not the only disrupted place. A huge proportion of Syria's population were stably settled refugees who are now without shelter and certainly in fear of persecution and death from the super sectarian so-called 'rebels and freedom fighters that US/NATO and Australia are supporting, of which the most spectacularly organised are ISIS, which the West now disowns because it has publicly turned against the West.

And ISIS is itself an army that people join because they need wages. It is a brutal and rudimentary organising and pirate economic force in countries that have lost much of their infrastructure and administrative systems, and where the people cannot even rely on family and clan anymore because the populations of whole villages and cities have been displaced.

Yemen, the poorest country in the region, is now being gutted by Saudi Arabia which appears to have gone on a rampage because it is furious with the United States for talking to Iran, whom it considers a religious enemy.

The IOM wrote on 7 May (the most recent report):

"The conflict in Yemen has now entered its second month. 19 out of Yemen’s 22 governorates are affected by airstrikes or ground fighting. The death toll continues to rise, with nearly 1,300 deaths reported since the beginning of the conflict in March. More than 300,000 people are estimated to have been displaced, while thousands remain trapped by the fighting, unable to flee to safety. [...]The availability of fuel and other supplies, particularly food and medicine, has severely diminished. Where available, these essential supplies are obtainable at exorbitant prices."

So, as long as Australia remains allies with US/NATO which is making a total mess of this region on a variety of flimsy pretexts, but really wants to dominate the oil production there, we can expect more refugees and economic migrants in search of actual economies. In fact it looks almost as if the US/NATO want to destroy the peoples of the Middle East in order to get at the oil. Excuse me for this observation, but it does look like that. The 'migrants' who survive long enough to take boats and planes to Europe and further away have only managed to escape the general destruction.

For the European Union - which is heavily influenced by the United States - to suggest that Europe now take quotas of refugees - economic and traditional - rather than suggest that NATO and the US all back off and out of the region, seems frankly ridiculous. The whole situation is a grotesque indictment of globalism and all the leaders of all the 'great powers' who have combined to destroy Libya, suppress Bahrain, and who persist in demonising and attacking Syria's government, supporting Saudi and Qatar aggression, stirring up sectarianism and occupying and privatising the wealth of countries where they have no business.

And of course, our interference in Ukraine will also produce refugees, although so far Russia has taken in the majority.

Then again, the neo-con influence in European Union is not above hoping to reduce wages in Europe by deploying refugee/migrant quotas. For them it is probably like making lemonade out of lemons or something. Unfortunately the same predatory attitude is apparent in Australian industrial relations.

NOTES

Translated from the French below from Francetvinfo media releases, Tuesday 19th May, 2015:

"Pas question qu'il y ait des quotas de migrants" en Europe, déclare François Hollande.

Après Manuel Valls, c'est au tour de François Hollande de marquer son opposition à la proposition de la Commission européenne d'imposer des quotas d'accueil de migrants aux Etats membres de l'Union européenne. "Il n'est pas question qu'il y ait des quotas d'immigrés parce que nous avons des règles" sur "le contrôle des frontières et des politiques de maîtrise de l'immigration", a déclaré le chef de l'Etat, mardi 19 mai, lors d'une conférence de presse commune avec la chancelière allemande, Angela Merkel.

Previously published (23/3/15) on SANA.

23 April? 2015

Yerevan, SANA – Syria expressed on Thursday at a global forum its condemnation of the genocide which the Ottoman Turks committed against the Armenian people in 1915. The global forum "Against the Crime of Genocide" was held in the Armenian capital Yerevan commemorating the Centennial of the well-known genocide, which is marked on April 24 every year.

Delivering Syria's speech, Speaker of the People's Assembly Mohammad Jihad al-Laham said history will not forgive those "who didn't learn the lessons of wars on other peoples."

See also: Hockey abandons plans to speak at Armenian "genocide" centenary ceremony as Tony Abbott prepares to attend ANZAC Day services at Gallipoli | The Australian (24/4/15), Syria recognizes the Armenian Genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire, Parliament Speaker says | Public Radio of Armenia (24/4/15), Millions worldwide mark 100th anniversary of Armenian genocide (PHOTO, VIDEO) | RT (25/4/15), Armenia, Turkey still at odds a century after 1915 massacre | RT (22/4/15) and other articles about the Armenian Genocide.

The current Turkish government, the successor of the Ottomans, has thrust itself so deeply in the current crisis in Syria, opening its land wide to terrorists coming from all corners of the world to cross border into Syria and commit horrible crimes against its people.

"Any crime against humans must be condemned and rejected whoever the perpetrator, and how if that crime was a genocide in which more than a million and a half of the brotherly Armenian people were killed," al-Laham told the forum.

"We in Syria have always felt the Armenians' sense of belonging is as much to Syria as it is to Armenian and vice versa," he said, affirming that the Armenians in Syria are an integral part of its people.

Al-Laham drew parallels between the Armenian Genocide and the mass crimes targeting the people in Syria and Iraq, saying the crimes systematically committed by the terrorists in both countries target all of the two peoples' components and are aimed at cleansing areas of their inhabitants.

These, and the deliberate damaging of the cultural heritage and the archeological and historical sites in Syria and Iraq, all constitute "a genocide against humanity" and crimes against the history and culture, he added.

While stressing that the history of appalling criminality is repeating itself now through the terrorists of today, al-Laham said this would not have happened was it not for those states and sides that are supplying the terrorists with whatever funds, arms, training and political and media cover they need to commit crimes.

Armenian Premier: We support Syria in confronting terrorism, seek more economic cooperation

Later, Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said his country supports Syria in its fight against the terrorism exported to it from different countries.

During his meeting with Speaker al-Laham Abrahamyan stressed that the historical relations between Syria and Armenia are firmly established.

He saw that the Syrian participation in the forum, which marks the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, committed by the Ottomans in 1915, reflects how much deep is the friendship relations binding the people of Syria and Armenia.

Out of Armenia's interest in further activating the parliamentary, political and economic relations with Syria, Abrahamyan used the opportunity of his meeting with al-Laham to extend an invitation to the Syrian Prime Minister to visit Armenia with a view of expanding the areas of economic cooperation between the two countries.

Al-Laham renewed Damascus's solidarity with Yerevan on the occasion, calling for joint work on the international level to prevent such crimes from being repeated through eliminating the terrorism ravaging Syria and Iraq.

Qabas/Haifa Said

Appendix: Other articles about the Armenian Genocide

Why Israel does not recognize the Armenian 'genocide' | Washington Post (24/4/15), Why Israel still refuses to recognize a century-old genocide | the Times of Israel (24/4/15), Obama again avoids the term 'genocide' with Armenia | USA Today (24/4/15), As Armenia marks 1915 killing, Berlin calls it genocide | Reuters (24/4/15), Armenians mark 100 years since massacre, Recognizing the Armenian Genocide | theStar.com (20/4/15), Armenian genocide survivors' stories: 'My dreams cannot mourn' | The Guardian (24/4/1515), Obama, Armenia, and What Hitler Learned About Genocide Denial | The Daily Beast (23/4/15), Armenian 'genocide': Nine ethnic and religious groups facing extermination today | The Independent (24/4/15), Armenian Genocide March Will Halt West Hollywood Eastside Traffic on Friday | WeHo ville (23/4/15).

RT's Abby Martin interviews Kambale Musavuli, Spokesperson for Friends of the Congo, about the vital role of cobalt in many industrial and electronic manufactures and the use of cobalt in predator drones. The interview connects the genocide of many Congolese with corporate and government cobalt mining. Entire villages have been bulldozed to around mines.

(Original video is at http://rt.com/shows/breaking-set-summary/211303-police-us-congo-gas/)

The world does not realise the importance of the Congo's cobalt reserves in the political misery there and the human rights abuses. Because of this it does not realise the role that foreign investment in mining cobalt plays in the dispossession, disorganisation, and death of people in the Congo and in the maintenance and support of dictatorships.

People in the population movement often ascribe poverty, misery and dispossession to overpopulation, especially when the poverty is obvious, as in Africa. What they often fail to realise is that it was not always so. My books in the Demography, Territory, Law series explore this. [1] And here is another article - about Ethiopia's population history, Development caused overpopulation in Ethiopia that sumarises some of the arguments against what we are usually told is so.

Congo's overpopulation has coincided with its 'development' and industrial exploitation. Today Australia imports many educated professionals from the Congo - in a way that can only weaken its social structure further. Australian billionaire, Gina Rhinehart has suggested that Australians are uncompetitive, comparing them with Africans who work for terrible wages: " ... Africans want to work and its workers are willing to work for less than two dollars a day." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gina_Rinehart This is what invasion, 'development' and 'industrialisation' do to a country and they do it on purpose because it creates a situation of abject wage slavery. A variation on this was to simply marginalise the original indigenous populations if they were sparse or small-scale, then import slaves, prisoners or immigrant labour - as in Haiti, Costa Rica, Australia, and many other Pacific islands.

In the late 19th century, when European 'development' began, the population of Congo was estimated at less than 4 million. Under King Leopold of Belgium the population was grossly disorganised and dispossessed by genocide and other violence. In 1950 the total population of Congo was estimated at 12,184,000. This was already a huge increase over the population it had had when its was structured according to tribes. By 2010 the population was 65,966,000.

In 1876, Leopold II of Belgium formed the philanthropic organisation “Association Internationale Africaine“ (International African Association) and became its single shareholder. Typically, Leopold's industrial take-over was spearheaded initially by missionaries, who prepared the way.[2]

"Leopold's rule over the Congo involved a complex interlocking of private enterprise and state power. In the first place, his operations were carried out in the name of the International Association of the Congo. This Association, independent of Belgium or any other state but completely under Leopold's private control, proceeded to set up a sovereign state in the Congo, with Leopold as king and its own army, the Force Publique. Later on, the Congo State would lease out large tracts of its territory to private companies, which exercised virtual state power in their own zones.

A further twist was that the state (i.e. Leopold himself) held blocks of shares in the companies. Leopold's agents got local chiefs to sign treaties yielding up their sovereignty. The treaties also granted Leopold the land, a trading monopoly, control of roads and waterways, mineral and forest rights and - most ominously of all, the right to labour services. The chiefs had no knowledge of written documents, the French language or the legal concepts of capitalist Europe, and may have been under the impression that they were making treaties of friendship. Moreover, Leopold's men used chicanery such as delivering an electric shock from a concealed battery to convince the Africans that they possessed magical powers. All 'vacant lands' were declared to be state property. This conveniently ignored the reality of traditional land use in Africa. Often, apparently uncultivated land was just lying fallow as part of a farming cycle. Other land was used for hunting or gathering firewood. In any case, the state would determine whether land was 'vacant' or not." Source: http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/journal/h32002_RC_Leopold.htm

NOTES

[1]My books, Demography, Territory, Law: The Rules of animal and human population, Countershock Press 2013 and Demography, Territory, Law2: Land-tenure and the origins of capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press 2014, explore this fallacy generally, but it is not hard to work out for yourself that there is something wrong with the assumption that Africa, India, China and overpopulated islands in the Pacific, could not always have been like that.
[2] "The Butcher of Congo: King Leopold II of Belgium" and http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/journal/h32002_RC_Leopold.htm

A recent article about Nigel Franks, who tortured a female kangaroo and cruelly disposed of her joey, led to expressions of despair and horror about this young man's behaviour. A criminological link between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans was drawn. I would like to suggest here that there may also be a political explanation in the normalisation of cruelty to animals by Australian authorities. Governments are demonstrating that they think it is okay to mistreat these sentient creatures, with the thinnest of justifications. At the end of this article I will suggest that this political attitude may forerun government violence against citizens in Australia.

Public shame for one, Status for another

One does not have to go so very far to see the example that Nigel Franks may have been following. Australian Government attitudes to kangaroos are appalling. They are violent, cruel, and use corrupt science (see "ACT Roo killings: Who profits? Behind the Earless Dragon mask". In mild contradiction to other anemic motherhood statements about 'biodiversity', their actions denigrate nature and objectify warm-blooded social animals by acting as if they have no family feelings and no rights to place and life itself.[1]

Government propaganda an inspiration to sadists?

Individuals who are gratuitously violent towards kangaroos quite possibly justify their actions as getting rid of 'pests' just like the ACT and other state governments. Kangaroos are not pests, of course, but they are demonised and objectified as such. "Theories" on kangaroo overpopulation ignore Australian Federal and State government policies to artificially stimulate human population growth on and around kangaroo territory and to run cattle and sheep in competition with kangaroos, even in the National Parks. Practice purportedly based on scientific theory on kangaroo overpopulation even ignores its own research. ACT government scientist, Don Fletcher, has been supportive of kangaroo culls on the basis of 'overpopulation', yet his own doctoral thesis, on my reading, completely undermines those attitudes. For instance, he wrote on page 237 of his study [2] that :

“The study did not provide evidence that high densities of kangaroos reduce groundcover to the levels where erosion can accelerate. Unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in low levels of ground cover. Groundcover had a positive but not significant relationship to kangaroo density, with the highest cover at the wettest site where kangaroo density was highest. Weather has an important influence on groundcover.”

Translation, if needed: Fletcher found that very high densities of kangaroos, even in wet weather, have unimportant impact on grassland.

Fletcher also wrote that some of the populations he was studying were at the highest density recorded. They ranged between 4.5 and 5.1 kangaroos per hectare. The density in the studies below was expressed in square kilometers. To get density per hectare, divide by 100. Fletcher wrote:

“The kangaroo density estimates reported in Chapter 7 for the three study sites (mean eastern grey kangaroo densities of 450, 480 and 510 km2) are the highest kangaroo densities reported. For comparison, the maximum density of combined red kangaroos and western grey kangaroos in the Kinchega study was less than 56 km2 (Bayliss 1987) and the density of eastern grey kangaroos at Wallaby Creek (Southwell 1987b) was 41 to 50 km2. The next highest kangaroo density outside the vicinity of my study sites appears to be that of Coulson et al. (1999a) for eastern grey kangaroos at Yan Yean Reservoir near Melbourne, which was 220 km2.”

Does the emotional blunting affect our judiciary?

Was the magistrate who gave Nigel Franks a suspended sentence, disappointing many animal carers, influenced by the same attitudes? If the government leads with misinformation and violence, we can perhaps expect some of our judiciary to go along with this and some of our youth to act it out. Our laws and their enforcement also reflect this immoral and violent outlook, this unfair demand upon the environment that it give 100% of everything to our species alone (which then is siphoned upwards to the cruel and greedy elite who model these attitudes in the first place.) Australian State government performances with regard to carrying out their obligations under wildlife acts and environmental laws have been formally shown up as incompetent and mean by recent Auditor General reports. ("Tasmania, West Australia, Victoria - our wildlife are ignored by government," and "Damning Auditor General Report on Fauna protection for Victoria.".

Unfortunately demographic 'science' is full of potted attitudes like the clunky ones on which the ACT bases its 'wildlife management'. Whilst wildlife activists that compare the shooting squads to Nazi death squads may initially strike daily consumers of the Age, the Australian, ABC and commercial tv and radio as dramatic and implausible, the clunky swiss-cheese of economic and demographic 'science' is very similar. Hitler's message,[3] on the basis of publicly endorsed statistics which really only bulked up church and business attitudes were that Germans should breed up and jews, gypsies, homosexuals, insane and intellectually disabled people should be culled. The ACT's message, on the basis of publicly endorsed statistics which really only bulk up growth lobby and economic scorched earth attitudes (shared by most churches, although perhaps not always the Anglican Church) are that Australians and new Australians should breed up and kangaroos, dingos, and wildlife habitat should be culled because they are clogging up the economy or are in need of pain-relief due to being too many now that we have taken their habitat. If possible we should make money out of them first by turning them into dog food for one market or gourmet meat for another market, composed of those who like to think they are showing discriminating taste and economic intelligence. Completely overlooked in this case, by normally humane people who are usually kind to animals, is that these creatures that stand on two legs like us, look forward like us, and bring up their young together like us in close-knit social groups, and can meet our gaze, also have feelings and memories like us. They may not be human but that does not make them nothing.

Thinking of animals as stupid 'things' pervasive

People are so blind to the consequences of what we do to other creatures that it is, not only possible, but the rule, for a human being to move into a new suburb and not realise that land was cleared for that house and that, therefore, other creatures were displaced. Then, when one of those creatures tries to fight back, no connection is made. Reading this article ("Woman-says-kangaroo-stalked-her-then-attacked."), about a kangaroo who attacked a woman and her dog in a new housing estate, you have to wonder, are most humans really so much more intelligent than kangaroos when they seem to lack such a basic understanding of territoriality? A more satisfactory explanation is that our society teaches us to ignore what is obvious - kangaroos experience suffering and can react to persecution.

Kangaroos are horribly badly treated in Australia. They are harassed, hunted and tortured, culled in thousands. The area where the animal described in the article alluded to above attacked or defended itself is an area of suburban expansion. We cannot know what that animal saw happen to its family, but it is very likely that this was its clan territory (clans are subsidiary to 'mobs') and that it has seen terrible things. The only reason people are surprised at this kind of thing is because they have so objectified these animals that they simply do not give them credit for feelings. This animal would be a refugee in his own country. It is heartbreaking for anyone with compassion and open eyes. I have spent a fair amount of time with wild kangaroos and have never encountered an aggressive one, although quite a few frightened ones, including some over 7 feet tall. As an environmental sociologist who looks at population and land-use planning I can see how our system is all wrong and our culture cruel to animals and to people and that these two things are related.

Overpopulation - human or kangaroo?

The reader may notice my attention to the problem of human overpopulation in Australia. My attitude could be described as 'eco-malthusian' but I have never advocated the culling of human beings. There are so many ways to defuse our population bomb and I have written a short book on this issue that identifies keys to stabilising population that are inherent in populations of most or all species, including human ones. Unfortunately for the status quo of dodgy demographics, I became curious and did my own research. I will be bringing out a more comprehensive book but the basic theory has been published and is available. If you really want to know how populations work ecologically, you can purchase Sheila Newman, The Urge to Disperse and Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law: The Rules of Animal and Human Populations at Amazon.com and Lulu.com among other retailers.[4]

Population and economic growth model and its consequences all unnecessary

The drive for economic and population growth in this country is counterintuitive to what most of us know to be true. For this reason constant propaganda is needed to obscure its adverse consequences and to make us ignore the evidence of our own eyes and hearts. We have every reason to think for ourselves in this case, instead of listening to our corrupt and emotionally blunted official leadership.

The financial and development industry reliance on population growth to fund expansion is no longer economically viable even in the short-term. It is contributing to the rise in the cost of water, power, food and housing. These high costs make manufacturing in this country extremely uncompetitive against other countries where the cost of land is much less. These high costs have contributed to the destruction of our manufacturing industry and our import/export imbalance. These costs are within the control of the government through the reduction of costly economic activity which is based on the creation of debt for the profit of a few focused beneficiaries in the growth lobby.

Employment is going to start to dry up and this is immediately very frightening if you are paying rent, mortgages or need to drive a car to get to food outlets. Once again, the government can mediate and mitigate the impact of employment decline. There is actually a positive way to deal with this. That is to halve the working day, share the work, and to reduce the costs of living which are in Australia’s control. Slowing down our economy by stopping expansion will save fuel, save lives, and save time for quality of life and local community strengthening. (I have written more extensively about how to cut down our impact per capita by limiting production and increasing local self-government, notably in the first chapter of Sheila Newman, Ed.The Final Energy Crisis,, 2nd Edition, Pluto Books, 2008.)

Unfortunately, instead of a democratic review of our resources and self-government strengths to meet the coming resource crisis, we have seen a rise in cruelty to other species and the objectification of citizens into customer-subjects to King Economy. Just as criminologists draw a lesson in psychology between Geoffrey Dalmar's and Ted Bundy's cruelty to domestic animals and their 'progress' to cruelty to humans, we should draw a warning from the increasingly blatant use of propaganda to justify cruel annihilation of native animals to facilitate the activities of an elitist growth lobby. As propaganda paves the way for developers to cover natural habitat and agricultural land with new suburbs for private profit, we may see that cruelty to humans follows the collapse of democracy in population policy and land-use planning in Australian states.

Are there any exceptions to the rule that destruction of local environments always accompanies destruction of democracy, equality and fraternity? Is the pain we know we cause around us a sign we should attend to for our own good?

NOTES

[1] By talking about warm-blooded species, I am putting roos in a similar grouping to humans, but that does not mean that I think that 'cold-blooded' species don't deserve our respect.

[2] Don Fletcher, “Population Dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands,” was on line as a pdf, which is the form I downloaded it as. Now apparently only available from University of Canberra Library, reference: https://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an42269526. A book by the same title and author has also been published. For more detailed analysis of the ACT situation and the 'science' of the culls, see (see "ACT Roo killings: Who profits? Behind the Earless Dragon mask".

[3] I have been criticized for wielding the Nazi example as if it were the only example of depraved official behaviour in relatively recent history. Unfortunately it isn't and the wars instigated in the Middle East by western powers are a contemporary example of brutality on the basis of proven false propaganda (weapons of mass destruction etc.) Almost anywhere strategic to resources or marketable land sees dispossession and brutality on a state and corporate organised basis. See Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for a team-research effort in exposing the motives and examples of this.

[4] The theory of the book is written first from a sociological angle and then from a biological angle. I found that some sociologists had problems understanding the biology and some biologists had problems understanding the sociology, despite positive peer reviewing from biologist, Prof David Pimentel of Cornel University and Dr Joseph Smith, who is a doctor of environmental law with knowledge of inheritance law. I will therefore be bringing out a longer book, with a generalist introduction and integrating the territorial allocation part of the theory with human inheritance laws and land-use planning and historical and actual examples, in the next few months hopefully.

Too often we fail to see the connection between the ecological destruction and cultural genocide of so-called "developing" nations and the lax immigration policies of those nations like Canada which play host to both the victims and the perpetrators of the tragedy. A look at the relationship between Sarawak's plight and the inflation of real estate values in Ontario, Canada and elsewhere should give us a better understanding of how plunder abroad promotes in-migration here. Canada, by offering an outlet to dirty money and the people who profit from it, must be seen as a willing accomplice and silent partner to a vast money-laundering operation.

Introducing The Godfather of Sarawak

I had a friend, "David", over for 3 hours this past Wednesday night. David, a serious Christian, and an individual of outstanding character, was a CUSO worker in Sarawak four decades ago and returned for a three month visit this winter to re-connect with old friends. Upon his return he treated me to a travelogue more enlightening and thorough than anything you would find on National Geographic program. Among his major concerns was the alarming growth of the Islamic population which is being favored by the patronage of the province's corrupt Minister, and the ominous potential that demographic shift might have for the liberty and security of non-Muslims. Coincidentally, two weeks after listening to David's account and seeing hundreds of his beautifully graphic pictures, I came upon a television documentary about the politics of this region, and invited David to view the recording. It was the 20 minute documentary that Global TV did on the Chief Minister of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmood, and his kleptocracy. David confirmed the truth of most of what was said in the documentary, and was very pleased that two environmental activists in London, England were following the labyrinthine money trail from "Daddy" to his daughter Jamilah Taib Murray, the wife of Canadian Sean Patrick Murray.

The Criminal Rape Of Sarawak’s Rainforest

I was able, in the second viewing, to record several fascinating facts about Jamilah and Sean Murray's real estate investments in Canada, which ironically began in Ottawa. What I found ironic is that Ontario's 'green' Premier Dalton McGuinty, darling of David Suzuki, leads a government with 11 Ministries who pay $4.9 million a year in rent to the Murrays for office space in their building(s). The Murrays---through their "Sakto Corporation"---- own six major commercial properties in Ontario worth over $100 million , money which has its origin in the criminal rape of Sarawak's rain forest and its conversion to palm oil plantations. This is a catastrophe of global significance. One square mile of Sarawak's rainforest contains more biodiversity than all of North America. More than that, in clearing cutting an area the size of England, the logging companies---owned by Taib's family and their political allies (largely ethnic Chinese)----they have obliterated the culture of the Penan people, one of the last nomadic tribes in the world. Many Penan protesters have been overtly killed or have simply disappeared. One of them, now a Canadian resident, spent a month in solitary confinement just for participating in a blockade to stop logging trucks. He walks the streets of a Canadian suburb like a disembodied and broken spirit, stalked by memories of a life spent in a tropical heaven, a heaven that is now rapidly being transformed into hell. As he spoke to the camera, his face was concealed in darkness---a testimony to the ability of Sarawak's "mob boss" to intimidate even the people who, one would think, should be beyond his grasp.

Corruption in Sarawak Finances Real Estate Development Abroad

As the logging has proceeded, the Taib family has grow richer and richer. At least 84% of the shares of Cahya Mata Sarawak (CMS) , a Sarawak-based construction conglomerate with net assets of $760 million (US) are held by Taib’s late wife and his four children Mahmuc Abu Bekir Taib, Sulaiman Rahman Taib, Hanifah Taib and Jamilah. According to Malaysia’s Anti-Corruption Commission, CMS ,“has a track record of receiving untendered public contracts worth millions of dollars and holds a cement monopoly in Malaysia’s largest state...and has also massively benefited from the Bakun dam construction which has been labelled by Transparency International as a ‘monument of corruption’”. A CMS subsidiary “Similajau Industries” has also formed a connection with Rio Tinto Alcan to oversee the an aluminum smelter with the scope to produce up to 1.5 million tons per year.

When Jamilah was a foreign student in Canada in 1983, Daddy the Godfather and Piggy Bank, gave her $23 million to play with, and so began her real estate acquisitions in Ottawa, now extended to America, Britain and elsewhere. In fact the British government is currently looking into alleged Taib family money-laundering in the UK and British offshore financial centres. Through “Ridgeford Properties”, Sean and Jamilah Taib Murray hold luxury properties in Central London estimated to be worth several hundred million pounds. Jamilah is also currently a Director on the boards of some 63 Malaysian companies.

Canada The Land Of Opportunity And The Champion Of Diversity

It warms the heart—doesn’t it---to know that it was Canada, the land of opportunity, which allowed this enterprising immigrant to launch a business empire stretching almost across the globe, fuelled by monies obtained by crony capitalism and the wanton destruction in a faraway tropical land, home to so much biological and human diversity. How ironic that diversity can be destroyed in Sarawak to feed real estate development in a country that brags about its “diversity”.

Dalton McGuinty too can take pride in helping her to grow her business and reward Minister Taib for his program of relentless rainforest destruction. Whatever initiatives McGuinty has taken to reduce carbon emissions in Ontario have been more than offset by the deforestation that has enabled Jamilah to build her empire. With the destruction of this magnificent jungle, the world is not only losing a unique culture, and untold species---including the orangutan---but a carbon sink of similar scope to the Amazonian forest. And Canada, it seems, must make itself a haven for refugees fleeing from these kinds of tragedies, but for the perpetrators and their ill-gotten gains as well. Is this an effective remedy for a problem that is all too common in the "developing" world? In many ways, Sarawak is a microcosm of the world. Greed, corruption, economic disparity, religious friction, environmental degradation and the displacement of indigenous peoples---it is all in play. Perhaps we can attack the problem in another way. A way that would assist both Canada and those who we would want to protect from persecution. Rather than open the door to untold millions of refugees, maybe we should slam the door to the forces of greed, corruption, and destruction that drive them out. Could we not embargo their exports, most especially their exports of corrupt politicians, their family and their fortunes?

Always Follow The Money Trail

Clare Brown --the London-based environmentalist determined to expose Taib's corruption---has been able to shine a light on Taib's activities by pouring through the paper trail of investments. This, I think, is the key to discrediting any group. Thanks to Vivian Krause and Sun Media TV's persistence in showing the fraudulent nature of the David Suzuki Foundation's "charitable" status, Suzuki has been forced to distance himself from his own foundation. And the public is finally waking up to the corporate corruption of environmental groups. The Conservatives--to their credit--- seem determined to prevent green NGOs from taking donations from foreign-owned corporations. Our project, however, is to make the point that environmental NGOs should not be able to take money from ANY corporation, foreign or domestic. Shining a light on the big three (the DSF, the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy ) and their practice of taking corporate money should be key to our effort to question their failure to address the profoundly negative impact of mass immigration---and their integrity. How does this smell: the Sierra Club of Western Canada has accepted money from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RFB) to protest the oil sands development and Enbridge pipelines. How interesting. Jay Rockefeller, a major donor to the RFB, is the long-time Governor and now senior Senator of West Virginia, one of the biggest coal-producing states in America, supplying coal for electricity generation to two dozen other states. According to Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria, the burning of coal is 40 times more impactful than the burning of oil in terms of green house gas emissions, not to mention its medical effects. It seems that environmental groups are willing pawns of a corporate game that is less motivated by genuine concerns about the environment than deflecting attention from the damage they are doing in their own backyard. Shades of the East India Company, which supported Wilberforce's campaign to end slavery in order to undercut their chief rival in tea production---the West Indian slave plantations.

Scratch a noble cause and you find a mercenary motive.....

Green Inc. And “Green” Corporations---A Partnership Made In Hell

It is high time that the public come to understand that Green Inc. and the corporations that fund them are first and foremost a business. In return for the funding that maintains their paid bureaucracy and sustains their relentless quest for more and more donations, environmental NGOs give corporations what they crave---ecological dispensation, the seal of approval that they can wave on their websites and brochures as proof of their corporate "responsibility". Meanwhile, they can lobby for higher immigration quotas and aggressive outreach initiatives to recruit the foreign labour they want to fuel their drive to drill, mine and develop at an ever quickening pace----secure in the knowledge that they have bought the silence of their 'kept women' in the DSF and the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy.

The Moral Stench Of Canada’s Growth Lobby

Canada is the Chicago of the 1920s writ large. It's bipartisan immigration policy is like a numbers racket where everyone from the cop on the beat to the politicians at City Hall get a "piece of the action". Environmental NGOs must be regarded as key constituents of the Growth Lobby, every bit as important to the team as are the slimy immigration lawyers, the cheap labour employers, the big banks, the Puppet Intelligentsia in academia and the CBC, which like the ethno-cultural organizations, feed off the taxpayer tit while they tirelessly work to undermine our country. Together they form a stew of putrid slime that has no equivalent except what one would see while peering through the hole of a outhouse. Next time you're in a Provincial Park and nature calls, take a whiff. That, my friend, is the foul stench of Canada's Immigration Industry---an industry that is fully complicit in the rape of Sarawak and regions like it across the world.

Tim Murray
May 4, 2012

This article identifies a tendency internationally to desensitize the public to the mass-murder by Western-supported governments of whole peoples whom they find inconvenient. Australia has a history of cultivating 'wilful blindness' to these events in our neighborhood, under the leadership of powerful government figures. Geoffrey Taylor here draws our attention to an example of such a complex attitude in an interview with Paul Keating last year. [This article started out as a response to Tigerquoll's comment, "Willful Blindness in East Timor, Sri Lanka, and now West Papua".]

This article identifies a tendency internationally to desensitize the public to the mass-murder by Western-supported governments of whole peoples whom they find inconvenient. Often the victims of this persecution are described as or even call themselves 'communists'. Usually they would more correctly be called nationalist peasant movements against Western supported governments that are privatising and corporatising [colonising] the common and traditional land of these people and depriving them of their right to self-government. Such genocides are later 'economically' justified by an averaged rise in living standards with increased GDP that comes with the overtaking of small subsistence holdings and their adaptation to commercial agriculture and other industries. That these agricultural and industrial changes could only come about by mass dispossession and slaughter of the original land-holders is almost never acknowledged in any manner that might be meaningfully pinned on the political, private and corporate entities which ultimately profit from these despicable colonial events. Australia has a history of cultivating 'wilful blindness' to these events in our neighborhood, under the leadership of powerful government figures.

Geoffrey Taylor here draws our attention to an example of such a complex attitude in an interview with Paul Keating last year. Keating stands out as a prime minister who, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, cultivated Australia's supportive relationship with the brutal and oppressive Suharto Government in Indonesia. Candobetter Ed.

In a recent interview (24 Mb MP3 file here) on 2 November last year with the ABC's Richard Fidler, former 'Labor' Prime Minister Keating dismissed concerns for human rights and democracy in Indonesia. He claimed that figures given by economists proved that ordinary Indonesians had been lifted from poverty to prosperity by the policies of former dictator Suharto, who came to power in the coup of 1965 in which more than half a million members and supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were murdered.[1]

Keating's apologies for the Suharto dictatorship have to be read to be believed. I have not yet fully transcribed all that is of interest from the above-mentioned MP3 file, but below is some:

Richard Fidler (RF): One of the things I get from your book is that you, kind of, seem indifferent toward -- you shrug at the idea of democracy in Asia. ...

Paul Keating (PK): No, no ..

RF: You treat it like an over-rated virtue like chastity before marriage or something like that. You're going to go: Ahh!, ... We make too much fuss about the idea of ...

PK: Yeah, A lot of this came from our debate about Indonesia. Here is our largest neighbour, about two hundred and thirty million people. -- the largest, you know, five or six flying hours across the archipelago, ... -- because of what happened at Balibo in Timor, the Fairfax newspapers, especially the Sydney Morning Herald, ran this brutal campaign against Indonesia for nearly 30 years. In fact the Sydney Morning Herald editorialised in favour of a military attack by Australia on Indonesia. You can imagine it. ... And this is all because they don't share our democratic values. The fact that Suharto's New Order Government pulled two hundred and thirty million people from abject poverty and brought them to a reasonable standard of living --- In fact, the year before the economic collapse of '97/'98 the World Bank said that the declines in infant mortality and the rise in education standards, the general improvements in health and the distribution of income are greater in Indonesia than any country under study. ...

RF: But do you ...

PK: This cuts no ice, of course, with the donkeys at the Sydney Morning Herald

RF: That's, that's true, but you know, then, that Suharto was pretty much a gangster in many ways ...

PK: No, he wasn't. No, no!

RF: His whole family were into that economy in a big way ...

PK: No, no!

RF: The cars, tobacco ..

PK: No, no! You don't know that ...

RF: Clothes. They were all in on that

PK: They were

RF: I think what you're saying is that, like you have got to watch your terms. This guy down the road -- the gangster down the road isn't such a bad bloke, because he keeps the streets quiet.

PK: No, no. You've ... Let's get the argument set right right here. In the country which has got no wealth, he local people, the ..? boomies as they call them ...

The demonisation of Communism, which has increased in recent years, allows the large scale killing of Communists in countries such as Vietnam, Korea and Indonesia to be glossed over in the way Keating did or else depicted as other than the gross crimes against humanity that they in fact are.

In truth, most Communist Party members in those countries listed above had little in common with Stalin, whose terrible record had been used to so darken the name of Communism. Most would have been much more at home in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) than running Stalin's gulags. The murder of half a million PKI members would have had affected Indonesia in a fashion similar to what the murder of around 20,000-30,000 member of the ALP would have done to Australia at the same time.

The destruction of the PKI served to strategically protect the rear of the United States military as they commenced to obliterate Vietnam Laos and Cambodia with more bombs than were dropped in the Second World War, resulting in the loss of more than 3 million dead in Vietnam alone.

The scale of the crime against humanity, made possible or directly committed by the Indonesian dictators so applauded by Keating, is chilling - and this man was Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996!

FOOTNOTES

[1] That and other estimates of 300,000 and 1,0000,000 are given on page 25 of Pretext for Mass murder (2006) by John Roosa. As so much of the mass murder was covered up by Suharto's police state, it was not possible to properly investigate the mass murder until after Suharto's resignation in 1998.

The mass slaughter of rhinos have continued in South Africa and with the indiscriminate
slaughter of more than 250 rhinos since January 2010 it can only be described as a
genocide; with all due respect to the human race. The slaughter has been fuelled by man’s greed and the recent arrests of various prominent business men, professional hunters and game farm owners have rocked South African communities.

The manager of a well-known game farm called Maremani in the Mussina district and
owned by the AAGE. V. Jensen Charity Foundation Mr. Tommie Fourie (52) have systematically been de-horning rhinos on the property and selling the horns. He appeared in the court in Mussina on the 1st November on charges of the illegal rhino horn. It is alleged that he sold 36 rhino horns to a prominent game farmer in the Thabazimbi area Mr. Jacques Els (36).

Els handed himself over to the authorities and was released on bail of R30 000.00. He
was also charged for the illegal trade in rhino horns. He admitted that he also dehorned some of his own rhinos without the necessary permits. When he was asked about the alleged sale of rhino horn between him and Fourie, he denied this vehemently.
I only held onto someone’s horns for them. He reiterated that he was not involved in the illegal poaching of rhinos.

Earlier the owner of a safari operator, his wife and a professional hunter are alleged to
be some of the masterminds arrested and taken into custody for rhino poaching.

Mr. Dawie Groenewald (42) a director of Out of Africa Adventurous Safaris in Polokwane Limpopo South Africa and the alleged master mind behind the poaching syndicate, his wife Sariette (34) and Tielman Erasmus a professional hunter all spent a couple of day behind bars before they were released on bail.

They were arrested on the 20th September along with Drs. Carel Toet and Manie du
Plessis of the Nylstroom Animal Clinic and Toet’s wife Marisa.

Source: newsletter, October, 2010 San Wild